She still felt lost.
And yet, somehow, she’d been aware of Benedetto the whole time. Her husband and perhaps her killer—though she couldn’t quite believe that, not from a man who could give a piano like this as a gift—standing in the corner of the room with his gaze fixed on her.
She would not say that she was used to him, because how could anyone become used to a hurricane?
But she craved that electric charge. The darkness in his gaze, the sensual promise etched over his beautiful face, his clever mouth.
She’d played and played. And she could not have explained it if her life depended on it, as she supposed it might, but the longer she played, the more it was as if her own hands moved over her body. As if she was making love to herself, there before him, the way she had in the car.
Exposed and needy and at his command.
Right where she’d wanted to be since that very first night.
Angelina could hardly contain herself. All she could think of were the many times in this last, red-hot month of waiting and worrying and wondering, when her legs had been spread wide and he had been between them. His mouth. His fingers.
She’d played because her body felt like his already and there was no part of her that disliked that sensation.
She’d played because playing for him felt like his possession. Irrevocable. Glorious. And as immovable as the stone walls of the tower that sang the notes she played back to her, no matter the piece, as sweet and sensual songs.
Benedetto lowered himself over her on the chaise, and she forgot about playing, because he kissed her like a starving man.
Angelina kissed him back, because his shoulders were as wide as mountains and behind him she could see only the darkening sky. And her ears were filled with the rushing sound of the sea waiting and whispering far below.
He was hard and heavy, and this time, he did not crawl his way down her body to bury his head between her legs. This time he let her feel the weight of him, pressing her down like a sweet, hot stone.
And all the while he kissed her, again and again, rough and deep and filled with the same madness that clamored inside her.
Angelina could no longer tell if she was still playing the piano, or if he was playing her, and either way, the notes rose and fell, sang and wept, and she could do nothing about it.
She didn’t want to do anything about it but savor it.
Because whatever song this was, it made her burn.
Again and again, she burned.
Only for him, something in her whispered. And that made her burn all the more.
Benedetto tore his mouth from hers and began to move down her body, then, but only far enough to tug on the bodice of her dress. Hard.
He glanced at her, his dark eyes bright and gleaming, and tugged on her dress until it tore. Then he tore it even more, baring her breasts to his view.
And when she gasped at the ferocity, or at the surge of liquid heat that bloomed in her because of it, he laughed.
Benedetto looked at her, his face dark with passion and set fierce like a wolf’s, as he shaped her breasts with those calloused palms of his and then took one aching nipple into his mouth.
And then she was a crescendo.
Angelina arched up, not sure if she was fighting him or finding him, or both at the same time. His mouth was a torture and treat, and she pressed herself even more firmly into his mouth. Whatever he wanted to give her, she wanted to take. As much as possible.
His hands moved south, continuing their destruction. He tore her white dress to ribbons, baring her to him. And she thrilled to every last bit of sensation that charged through her from the air on her flesh, or better still, his wicked mouth.
And when he thrust his heavy thigh between hers even as he continued to hold her down and take his fill of her, she found that gave her something to rock the center of her need against.
Over and over again, because it felt like soaring high into the night.
And when she shattered, tossed over a steep edge as if from the window of this tower to the brooding sea far below, he laughed that same dark, delighted laugh that had thrilled her from the first.
Angelina could feel the laugh inside her, and it only made her shudder more.
When she came back to herself, rising from the depths somehow, he had rolled off of her. Her wedding dress was torn to pieces, baring her to his view completely. That he could see all of her was new, and faintly terrifying. No one had seen Angelina fully naked since she was a small child.
But far more overwhelming was the fact that as Benedetto stood beside her, looking down at the chaise from his great height, he was shrugging out of his own wedding clothes.
In all this time, all throughout this longest month, he had never dislodged his clothing or allowed her to do so.
“Are you horribly scarred?” she’d asked him once, feeling peevish with lust and longing and that prickling fear beneath. She’d been stretched out on her piano bench in the conservatory back home, after he’d buried his face between her thighs and made her scream.
As usual.
Benedetto had only smiled, drawing her attention back to that mouth of his and the things it could do. “None of my scars are external.”
And now the first stars were appearing in the sky outside. He blocked them all out and somehow made them brighter at the same time, because he was perfect. He was everything.
She had never seen a naked man in real life. She had never imagined that all the various parts that she’d seen in
